October 18, 1950 – August 21, 2018

Month: June 2015

The roots of failing enrollment management strategies can often be detected in the things people say when asked about enrollment. The following are paraphrases (to protect the innocent) of quotes we have collected over the past few years that reflect losing Strategic Enrollment Management strategies. All of these paraphrased quotes come from institutions with declining enrollment scenarios resulting in budgetary reduction ramifications. They were collected from our notes between 2013 and yesterday. They are in no particular order. They are numbered for reference in comments should you decide to. If you have quotes you would like to add, send them along or for the brave – post them in a comment.

“We had some pretty good candidates for our SEM leader but in the end I went with the bubbly, energetic, very positive attitude over the experience because the experienced candidate dwelled too much on the challenges and problems. I think attitude wins over experience.” – President on selection of a VP for Enrollment Management

“I really don’t want to hear about long term anything. It is June 1 and we have a serious budget hole I need fixed by September. Seriously, you should have gotten the message when I rejected your five year enrollment plan because it did not fix our short term revenue needs.” – President to VP for Enrollment Management June 1st.

“Strategic Enrollment Management approaches are interesting but they are just too complex. We need simple solutions and easy to do fixes that are within our limited budget and resources. Our folks are all busy and they do not have time to learn their way out. Besides, if I train them, they will just leave and make more money somewhere else.” – President

“I have not seen any newspaper ads this year. No wonder we are not making enrollment.” – Board Chair weighing in on enrollment goals

“We have not budgeted for a second year of Online development. It was supposed to be self-sufficient after one year.” – Provost

“I don’t need marketing or Strategic Enrollment anything, just a good PR person that really knows what they are doing and reporting directly to me.” – President

“We spent the last year rewriting all of the correspondence that is used in admissions and have not had time, as a task force, to do anything else.” – Provost in charge of Enrollment Task Force

“We used the money allocated for a Social Media person to fund another road warrior. ” – Director of SEM

“We have a SEM plan, have had for years. Each year we tweak our visitation schedule and our roadshow. Every 3 years we redo our collateral material. We do Social Media, I wouldn’t call it a strategy really. Financial aid reports to another VP, we don’t know what they do really. The web reports to IT so we don’t have a lot of say in it.” – 2014 comments by an Admissions Director

“We go with what has worked for us in the past.” – Director of Admissions

“I cut my marketing and enrollment staff by 1/3 to help with budget cuts as a result of lower enrollment. They should suffer just like the rest since it is their fault.” – President

“Our curriculum isn’t any different, better or worse than anybody else’s. We are different because we care more.” – Provost

“Yes I used bump strategies. I bumped off the Director of Admissions and the VP for Enrollment Management and took over the leadership of our marketing and recruitment staff. I got a fire under them and they will do just fine with a little fear in their hearts.” – President

“We did SEM for a year. It didn’t work, so we are moving forward on branding.” – President

“If everybody just did their job, we would be fine.” – VP Finance

“Academics and curriculum have nothing to do with managing enrollments and recruitment.” – VP Academic Affairs

“I am not investing one more dime until someone shows me a guaranteed method of enrollment growth.” – VP Finance

“Applicants do not care about the curriculum, they care about parties, drugs, where their girlfriend or boyfriend is going, getting away from home, nightlife, dorm rooms, and fun. Don’t tell me its the curriculum, stupid.” – Chair Academic Senate

“I am afraid to change anything, because I can’t be sure what is working and what isn’t. My only hope is to add on and hope it gets better.” – Interim Director for Enrollment Management

“I had no idea we were discounting to that extent.” – President to Board in a Finance Committee meeting

“We do what we know, and we know what we do. Everybody is down so our decline is in line with the market. We just need to get used to being smaller.”- Director of Admissions

“We don’t offer enough financial aid. I need to cover a good deal more of our total cost of attendance with grants and discounts or I just can’t compete.” – Director for Enrollment Management

“I will invest in curriculum when you can prove to me that enrollments are guaranteed and we have the faculty and curriculum already in place.” – President

“We promise the moon and deliver a moon pie.” – Admissions Staff

“The President has to approve all messages, every letter, every paragraph. The VP Finance has to approve every purchase order, even if it is in our budget. We just acquired software to help in our Enrollment Management efforts but ended up getting the one we determine would not meet our needs because IT said they liked it and of course the price. It is August 1 and I am waiting for approvals on virtually everything I need for our Fall campaign. Our CRM system, which will not meet our needs, has been delayed from August and will not be installed until January. How do you think we are doing?” – Outgoing Director for Enrollment Management

“We do OK until we tour our freshman housing.” – Admissions Staff

“Campus tours are tricky, we have to avoid litter, falling plaster, peeling paint, old furniture, antique classrooms, and focus on a small route that has been cosmetically engineered. We have been told that our preferred word for our campus is ‘charming.” I have not one wow place to dwell in.” – Admissions Staff

“I have heard all of the excuses, a lot of competition, need more aid, not enough staff. I believe there are plenty of students waiting to enroll. We are just not very good at getting them here.” – President to the Admissions staff during a ‘Pep Talk’

“I was told we will never directly market programs. There is not enough money to market all of them and selecting some to promote is a powder keg that would blow in a second.” – VP for Enrollment Management

“Our academic story is limp and very hard to get a prospect excited. We sound just like everyone else. In fact, there are folks who are proud of we are just like everyone else. There is not much of a value equation we can talk about except the basic value of an education. We tell students we have small classes, faculty care, we care, our students like us and are glad they came to us. But they basically get that from a lot of institutions.” – Admissions Staff

“Basically we communicate with prospects three times, by letter, by email and then by letter again. Once they apply, I think we do much better… Social Media? I can’t get budget approval to hire someone.” – Director of Admissions

“Our students mostly come from the surrounding communities. Our region has a lot of institutions and competition is fierce. We have never examined strategically what the geographic recruitment sphere should be. We did try recruiting in California for a year, but it was expensive and didn’t really pay its own way in results.” – Admissions Staff

“Not that we would admit it, but our discount rate is over 45%. We report to the board that it is 35%, but that is because we use clever accounting to disguise certain aid types.” – VP for Enrollment Management

“We do virtually no marketing at all. Our VP Marketing serves the President. They do speeches, event planning for Development, and they do print really well. They are not a great deal of help to us. They write nothing for us. There is no concept of strategic position or where do we measure up with respect to the competition. Planning from Marketing’s perspective is event and development publications, even those cater to our older alums.” – VP for Enrollment Management

“There was a directive handed down that academics should develop some new programs to fix our enrollment shortfall projected next fall. Really, can you imagine, believing that a new program developed in Spring can impact fall enrollments? That’s what we are up against.” – VP for Enrollment Management

“We are so far out of alignment managing our various academic and enrollment cycles, it is a wonder we even function. I tried to get the cabinet to at least fully understand when I arrived last fall but I can’t get anyone to even engage in the conversation at the executive level. Everyone is overwhelmed. We are always in crisis of the minute mode. Everything appears too complex to really understand, so we just run around slapping on Band-Aids and getting through the day.” – VP for Enrollment Management

“Remember, I just got here. We have never done anything strategic. Our strategy has really been a financial one. We sold real estate to cover operating deficits.” – CFO

“We closed our two-year college, presumably to focus on upper division. It was very disruptive and helped create a culture of finger pointing, fear, second guessing, and blame. Very bad academic culture was the only real result. The upper division strategy failed to turn us away from decline. So then we chased quick fixes. When that failed the head hunting began.” – Chair Academic Senate

“I need an implementer not a strategist to head my Enrollment Management team.” – President

“When I arrived a month ago, I was handed a SEM Plan. Apparently it simply was not implemented. Seems they thought new staff would be hired to enable all the things in the plan to be done. When that didn’t happen the operations just continued as they always had and enrollment continued to decline.” – VP for Enrollment Management

“Our SEM Plan required a modest, bare bones, really, system and training budget which was not funded. Hard to implement new when you can’t get folks up to speed and can’t acquire the basic tools of the trade.” – VP for Enrollment Management

“I spend a lot of time listening to ‘suggestions’ of how to fix our enrollment decline. Things like, ‘have you called them,’ or ‘did you ask them to apply,’ or ‘did you tell them how different we are and how much we care.’ I also am handed an inventory of distracting must do’s, like meetings I have no real need to be in but take many hours out of my week. Then there are the constant drags on momentum. It took me two years to get our Social Media efforts funded, then they were postponed for a year putting us three years behind.” – VP for Enrollment Management

“We go from crisis to crisis and magic fix and short cut to Band-Aid. No sustained focus, no long term effort sustained for enough time to get results. No one understands we work forward looking, multiyear cycles.” – VP for Enrollment Management

“We tolerate failure and poor performance. Our VP for Enrollment Management has been here forever, has no real plan, reveals shortfalls too late, has a million excuses, resists change or even evaluation of any kind. I surely would not get away with any of it.” – VP Development

“We have a new Leader who is clueless. Came in and stopped everything that was in progress. Occupied the Marketing staff for most of the first 6 months supporting an Inauguration instead of supporting recruitment. Spent a year reorganizing and focusing on a dashboard. Replaced everybody so they are the President’s folks. Fired the Provost, the VP Marketing, the head of Enrollment Management and reallocated budgets to support pet projects. Put out a mandate to increase enrollments, no plan, no analysis just mandate and control. Meanwhile, we have gotten smaller, weaker, and poorer. And this leader was not the Selection Committee’s first or second choice.” – retiring Faculty member

“The culture is tense. Nervous, without a plan, whittled expenses to the bone, kind of tense. The expectation is that there is a sure thing, quick fix trick we can use. We keep chasing it, wasting time, money, and precious recruitment cycles. We have been doing this for three years and avoided a detailed plan that had promise because it spanned five years. We avoided it because it required a reallocation of resources that we had at the time but politically difficult.” – Academic Dean

“Our enrollment strategy? Blame, fire, repeat.”- Admissions Staff

“We talk about the decline, talk a lot about it. We seem unable to even get a footing upon which to do anything. So we talk. Been talking for a couple years. Now we are talking about downsizing. No one seems to like any idea that is suggested. They are unsure. Risk averse, they ask where is the proof, how can we be sure? I have to go to a meeting now, to talk about holding positions vacant.”- Associate Academic Dean

Invest in increasing the value of your student’s educational experience, and that means curriculum.

Recognize that theunderlying issuesthat created such tense market dynamics defy quick marketing, branding, slap together program fixes. Doesn’t mean marketing and branding are not important, they are, but it does mean success requires much more than billboards on freeways, placards on buses, going on-line, and hastily copying others curricular portfolio.

Recognize it takes anAcademic/SEM Teamto achieve a competitive strategic position in the dynamic learners market that is today and tomorrow.

Recognize the gift of ‘bump’ strategies that provide a short term increase in enrollments and the precious investment dollars they provide to continue meaningful transformation.

There is much more to Academic SEM…

So, what can be done NOW?

Starting with mining the mission, and re-conceptualizing your Strategic Plan as ‘Curriculum-Centered’ and the Curriculum as ‘Learner Centered,’ then focus on strategic position. How? Use the Curriculum-Centered Strategic Planning Model (CCSPM) and the SRS Method as reference.This is not a long drawn out effort, it starts with evaluating the existing strategic plan and assets and creating short-term market wins. In the process identify opportunities for program market revitalization and develop a strategic market narrative.

Academic SEM Posters Available

Academic SEM Funnel [MGDA01]

Academic SEM Cycles [MGDA02]

The three foundational elements of NASA’s evolving technology strategy include Roadmaps for 15 Technologies, a Strategic Technology Investment Plan (STIP), and a software system to integrate and manage it all called TechPort.

In 2010, NASA developed a set of Technology Roadmaps to guide the development of space technologies. The draft 2015 NASA Technology Roadmaps expand and update the original roadmaps, providing extensive details about anticipated NASA mission capabilities and associated technology development needs. NASA believes sharing the roadmaps with the broader community will increase awareness, generate innovative solutions to provide the capabilities for space exploration and scientific discovery, and inspire others to become involved in America’s space program. The promising new technology candidates that will help NASA achieve its extraordinary missions are identified in the draft 2015 NASA Technology Roadmaps. The roadmaps are a foundational element of the Strategic Technology Investment Plan (STIP), an actionable plan that lays out the strategy for developing technologies essential to the pursuit of NASA’s mission and achievement of National goals. The STIP prioritizes the technology candidates within the roadmaps and provides guiding principles for technology investment. The recommendations provided by the National Research Council heavily influence NASA’s technology prioritization. NASA’s technology investments are tracked and analyzed in TechPort, a web-based software system that serves as NASA’s integrated technology data source and decision support tool.

So what can Higher Education Learn?

As NASA did in 2010 and renewed in 2015, recognize the influence that the development and adoption of mission critical technologies have on the future. For higher education, I believe it means recognizing the inexorable influence of how the emerging Global Digital Learning Ecosystem and the technologies that it rest upon influence learning, learners, educators and the business of higher education. A technology strategy is not about technology, but rather about learning and creating value in the learning marketplace through the learner’s learning experience.

Recognize the need for a long-term forward-looking view that extends out 20 years into the future. This means focusing upon long-term sustainability despite short-term crisis and limited resources. Concepts such as course scalability, embedded assessment, community of practice curricula, proficiency based curricular models and architectures, lifelong learning markets, and differentiating the academic portfolio are key to future plans. Such strategies are a long-term investment and can take years to develop and perfect, but surprisingly can result in immediate benefits.

Recognize that a technology strategy means managing and integrating Multiple Mission Critical Technologies. The future is not one vendor or one system, but rather multiple technologies woven into an integrated strategy. Like NASA’s multiple roadmaps, higher education must plot a technology evolutionary path for Learning Management Systems, Assessment Methods, Curriculum Development Platforms, and a host of other focused categories. It means accommodating the fact that technologies are rapidly changing and rapidly evolving, so being nimble is important.

Recognize the future is one of market impotence unless the long-term technological capacity of the institution is enabled by an ongoing long-term investment plan. Academic leaders must look beyond the crisis of the minute or term and invest to develop a future. Wasting time and resources on quick fixes and sure things is the pathway of decline. Capacity translates into value that must be substantiated, delivered relentlessly over time, and positioned competitively in the learning marketplace. Each requires technology capacity in the era of the Global Digital Learning Ecosystem populated by digital natives (now 35 years old and younger).

Above all of the lessons the NASA Roadmaps can teach higher education, we must recognize that short-term actions must aggregate to pave the pathway to long-term sustainability. Optimize each and every resource, manage the calendar carefully and strategically, use resources (especially human capital) to focus on high yield, high impact results. This requires a multi-year, forward-looking vision that frames and informs the decisions that propel an institution forward. (We must recognize that higher education, where technology is concerned, lags generally far behind.)

The future is not about technology taking over learning, it is about learning systems optimizing technology and for that we need Roadmaps to the future…